Table tennis is a relatively young sport that originated in the early 1800's by British Army officers that used lids from cigar boxes as paddles, rounded corks from wine bottles as balls and a row of books aligned across the middle of a table to form a “net.” Later, hollow celluloid, or plastic, balls were used in place of rounded cork balls. The name “ping pong” derived from the sound made when the hollow celluloid balls hit the paddle and then hit the table.
With the growing popularity of ball games which a ball or other game projectile is struck by a paddle, various paddle configurations have been developed to provide better control of the ball during play. Conventional paddles commonly use a flat panel, which is fixed to a handle. A player's fingers wrap around the handle to hold the paddle in a bat-like manner. This configuration provides marginal ball control as the player swings the paddle at the ball. Players often wrap their hand around the flat panel to obtain more direct control of the ball. The disadvantage to using conventional paddles in this way is that the transition from forehand to backhand is difficult.
An improvement to the bat-like paddle was the two-sided bat or racquet shown in U.S. Pat. No. 1,930,281. This invention included two independent striking surfaces supported by a pair of parallel stays. A central handle extended transversely between the stays. The disadvantage to using this invention was that a player's fingers were wrapped around the handle in a fist-like manner to hold the paddle similar to conventional paddles.
The paddle of U.S. Pat. No. 2,987,316 completely eliminated the handle of a conventional type of a table tennis or ping pong paddle. This invention included a pair of spaced oppositely facing paddles connected by a pair of spacers extending between the paddles which were used for receiving the finger portion of a hand. The paddle received a player's hand in a flat or extended position. The disadvantage to using this invention was that the paddle relied on a frictional engagement with the palm and back of the hand for mounting the paddles on a player's fingers.
It is desirable to configure a double-sided ping pong paddle that allows a player's hand to glide in between opposing panels for ease of use and fast transition from forehand to backhand, but to provide a stop for the player's thumb and fingers to hold the paddle with the palm of his or her hand in a flat position.